Charlotte Hornets: Contracts that could prevent re-signing Kemba Walker
The Charlotte Hornets will be faced with many hard decisions in this year’s offseason. One of them being the re-signing of the team’s star point guard, Kemba Walker.
The Charlotte Hornets have many issues that they need to solve in this year’s offseason. The major issue that is on everyone’s mind is, “how will the Hornets re-sign Kemba Walker?”
On Thursday, the Hornets found out that Walker had been selected for an All-NBA team. The team that he made was the All-NBA Third Team, and it consisted of players such as Russell Westbrook and Lebron James.
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There is a problem with Walker making this All-NBA Team though; he qualifies to receive a supermax contract of about $221 million this offseason. This kind of contract is going to be hard to give Walker, as the team consists of a few players who are being overpaid.
One of the contracts that could prevent the Hornets from re-signing Walker is no other than Nicolas Batum’s. During next season, Batum is set to make $25 million on his current contract.
Batum had one his worst seasons with the Hornets last season, averaging 9.3 points and 5.2 rebounds per game. Every fan knows that Batum does not deserve the contract that he has, but it’s sad to think that this contract could prevent Charlotte from retaining Walker.
Another contract would be the one that Bismack Biyombo currently has. In April, Biyombo accepted his player option, which allows him to make $17 million during the 2019-20 season.
Biyombo only played for 783 minutes during this season, and that is half the amount of minutes that he received during the 2017-18 season with the Orlando Magic. Given Charlotte’s current situation; it’s not ideal to be paying a player this much money to ride the bench.
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The last contract that I would like to touch base on would be Cody Zeller’s. During next season, Zeller is set to make $14.4 million, but there’s something wrong with this; Zeller’s ability to stay healthy.
During the past two seasons, Zeller has made over $26 million with the Hornets, missing a total of 82 games between the two seasons. No disrespect on Cody, but why are the Hornets paying so much to someone who has basically missed the same amount of games as an entire NBA season?
Other Large Contracts
- Marvin Williams – $15 million
- Micahel Kidd-Gilchrist – $13million
I could go on telling you why these contracts are bad, but the Hornets got their self into this mess with their former GM, Rich Cho. With these contract situations, Charlotte has a lot of salary issues to solve if they want to retain Walker.
Luckily, the Hornets have a new GM going into this year’s offseason who’s had more time this season to prepare. Kupchak has stated that he wants to work with Walker and if that’s the case, he has a lot of convincing to do.
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The NBA Draft is set to occur in under thirty days, and the start of free agency is almost a month away. I expect this will be an interesting offseason, and I foresee contract negotiations with Walker heating up in June.